You may have heard or read about HDTV and wondered what certain terms mean. Here are some explanations.

Picture Pixels

High-Definition-Television displays pictures that contain significantly more detail, resulting in much 'crisper' pictures. Images viewed on TV screens are made up of small picture elements known as 'pixels.' Each of these pixels is made up of three, closely spaced dots of color - red, blue and green. The pixels in HDTV sets are square, smaller, and spaced closer together than traditional TV-resulting in at least 4 ½ times more visual detail than standard analog TV.

Aspect Ratio

Aspect ratio describes the relationship of a screen’s width to its height. HDTV uses a widescreen format of 16:9—just like in a movie theater (by comparison, the aspect ratio on a standard TV set is 4:3). Which means your HDTV picture captures everything the filmmakers intended.

Resolution

Television images are divided into horizontal lines of pixels. The more lines, the better the picture quality.

Regular televisions show 480 lines per frame. HDTV, on the other hand, uses up to 1080 active, viewable lines of resolution. A Big difference.

How those lines are redrawn on the TV screen is called scanning mode. Some HDTV systems use interlaced scanning, others use progressive scanning.

Interlaced scanning (denoted in resolution with an "i", 1080i, for example) means every other line of pixels in a frame is refreshed every 60th of a second. Thus, the complete frame is "redrawn" every 30th of a second.

Progressive scanning (denoted in resolution with a "P", 720p, for example) refreshes every line of pixels with every scan. Thus the complete frame is "redrawn" every 60th of a second.

YPbPr
YPbPr represents component video connections, where luminance (Y) is represented by a green jack, separate from the color components blue (Pb) and red (Pr). Most high-definition sets today support this format. These colors should not to be confused as RGB output.

How will my HDTV set handle SDTV?

For the most part, all HDTV monitors are capable of supporting an interlaced SDTV (480i) signal, some also support 480P. However, not all HDTV monitors can handle both 720P and 1080i HDTV signals.

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